HackforLA1: A mentor helps students interested in learning programming at a Hack for LA event in Boyle Heights in December. (Photo provided by Hack for LA, received May 2014)

From an application connecting beekeepers with rogue bees to a facial recognition system for donating to the homeless, Hack for LA hackathon wants to turn civic-minded ideas into applications that benefit Los Angeles residents.

“It’s a way for our vibrant technology community to give back,” said Catherine Geanuracos, co-founder of Hack for LA. “They’re willing to come in and spend the weekend volunteering to create apps and technology that is really for the common good.”

The two-day Hack For LA event tasks programmers, designers and idea people with turning publicly available data into software that locals can use to interact with their city.

Hack for LA helps inspire young people and diverse populations to get involved in coding, Geanuracos said. A student hacking side of the event will pair learners with mentors for the weekend.

The open data movement behind Hack for LA promotes transparency by giving residents the tools to keep an eye on the government, she said.

Los Angeles will relaunch its own open data initiative, data.lacity.org, Saturday morning to give the hackathon’s participants new open data sets to use in their applications, according to Peter Marx, Los Angeles’ chief innovation technology officer.

“We want to see interesting, useful innovations with our data,” Marx said. “We wanted to make it easier for anybody ... to be able to get access to the same data and do whatever they want to do.”

Marx pointed to Google Maps and Zillow as examples of companies that took government data and created applications used everyday.

“All these things wouldn’t exist if wasn’t for data being made available,” he said.

On the Hack For LA website, submitted team ideas ranged from simple suggestions to specific road maps for applications that could solve civic problems. Some focused on lofty ideas, like a credit system for immigrants or a Craigslist replacement, while others wanted to tackle everyday problems like tracking Metro routes, finding bike trails or getting rid of bee swarms.

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The top three best overall apps will win up to $3,000 during judging Sunday evening.